DEN06GA017 · Cessna 182R
Cessna 182R · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Jackson Hole Airport (JAC) to Afton Municipal Airport (AFO)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN06GA017
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Government
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 182R
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N9928H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jackson Hole Airport (JAC), Jackson, WYTo Afton Municipal Airport (AFO), Afton, WY
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Public Aircraft
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Maneuvering
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- In flight collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire, static
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Low altitude flight/maneuver, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The civil air patrol (CAP) pilot was en route to administer a checkride to another CAP member. A state trooper had made a traffic stop on U.S. 26 at milepost 125. While he wrote the ticket, the violator saw an airplane fly past her position in a canyon following a river. She told the trooper what she had seen and said the airplane was below the highway and treetops. Shortly thereafter, the trooper located the inverted airplane submerged in the river. The trooper said there were no clouds in the sky and visibility was unlimited. Investigation revealed the airplane had struck and severed a 7/8-inch SSC (stainless steel conduit) EEIP (Extra Extra Improved Plow) braided cable. The cable was used by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to monitor river flow and depth. The length of the cable (from support to support) was 324 feet, and had a "breaking strength" of 80,000 pounds. It was anchored in concrete blocks approximately 30 feet above the river's surface. Slack placed the cable about 25 feet above the surface at midspan (lowest point). Evidence indicates the airplane struck the cable at about the 107 foot mark. The cable broke about 6 feet from the anchor on the other side of the river.
Probable cause
the pilot's intentional low level flight/maneuver. A contributing factor was his exercising poor judgment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN06GA017
- Event ID
- 20051128X01892
- Case number
- DEN06GA017
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b9d99575608f7a01ea6ed8763c2a81e8dc35f9ef3535e9630f4f10ce7acc3ba8; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:34:20.163Z.